[Stoves] Noise pollution and premature mortality

Ronal W. Larson rongretlarson at comcast.net
Thu Jul 27 00:15:58 CDT 2017


Nikhil et al

	The Cox paper costs $54 for a 24 hour look.  I’ll respond after you or someone sends it or I find a free source.

Ron



> On Jul 26, 2017, at 5:33 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Ron: 
> 
> So this is not off-topic any more. 
> 
> May I suggest you please read the assumptions behind HAPIT and the basic methodology of GBD, and state the reasons for your disagreement? 
> 
> If you don't have any reason for disagreement, that's fine too. I do not at all mean to offend you, and you have given me nothing to challenge you. 
> 
> I will write more later but consider these facts - or prove me wrong. 
> 
> a. There are no "dose" data on any of the relevant population for "HAP premature mortality" of the GBD exercises. Of the 4 million odd people considered "prematurely dead due to HAP" and lived some 200-250 million years, there ought to have been at least 10 million life-years of exposure. Go look up the WHO database on emissions. It has ZERO data, just references to literature of irrelevant and uncomparable field measurements for a few days at a time (I think only one exceeded a year, as of 2011). 
> 
> b. WHO itself admits that the only "exposure" information they have is national data (of random years when a census or survey was conducted) on "share of households claiming solid fuels as the principal cooking fuel". For both Kirk Smith and WHO, "solid fuels" is a "practical surrogate" for "dirty cooking". There is ZERO data on national fuel qualities and quantities, emission factors, emission loads. 
> 
> I would think that you might have been the first to complain at this charade -- "solid fuels are dirty". But that is what goes on behind GBD. 
> 
> I wouldn't mind that - who cares what Kirk Smith cooks up for those already dead - but I do mind it when WHO jumps in with Emission Rate Targets that have ZERO applicability without BAMG heroism/sheroism of one-box modeling whose assumptions are too ludicrous to comment on. 
> 
> All of this may be good enough for academic grants. In 30 years, we might get something about long-term dose-response relationship between HAP PM2.5 and cardiovascular morbidity or pneumonia and death. 
> 
> Until then, from policy perspective, DALYs (for those dead) and aDALYs (those not yet dead) are IRRELEVANT. 
> 
> For now, let me quote a single sentence about PM2.5 and predictability of premature mortality -  
> "The fundamental premise that [concentration-response] curves exist that can predict the public health effects caused by reductions in pollutant concentrations needs to be carefully reexamined and tested, as it does not appear to hold in general." Do causal concentration–response functions exist? A critical review of associational and causal relations between fine particulate matter and mortality, Louis Anthony (Tony) Cox Jr, Critical Reviews in Toxicology, Pages 1-29 | Received 12 Oct 2016, Accepted 23 Mar 2017, Published online: 28 Jun 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10408444.2017.1311838 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10408444.2017.1311838>This paper is recent and I did not have access to drafts when I started criticizing BAMG, IHME, WHO back last year. Just because I agree that LPG and electricity are cleaner burning technologies does not mean that I agree with Kirk Smith on what are "truly health protective" biomass stoves or his attribution of 4+ million premature deaths to HAP in the developing world. (I think he should've computed emissions and exposures for the whole world, including for heating. Just earlier today we learned about UK wood stoves.)  Tony Cox statement above is enough collaboration of my view that GBD had ZERO predictive value, hence ZERO policy relevance.
>  
> The market for research should remain confined to academia and advocacy groups; for purposes of policy analyses, the standard is "pre-ponderance of evidence", not "alleged evidence" computed by model estimates based on dubious assumptions based on non-existent data.
> 
> Just remember - Indicators for the SDG goals relating to HAP are Indicator 7.1.2: Proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology, and Indicator 3.9.1: Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution.
> You and all members of this list striving to produce "better biomass stoves" have already lost the battle on the first -- only the proportion of population with PRIMARY reliance on LPG and electricity matters, BY DEFINITION. How biomass stoves can get to the second indicator is open to question. There are no dose-response relationships worth a dung-cake; more importantly, there are no data on doses or responses. We have all been fooled. 
> 
> Nikhil
> 
> ---------------------------- 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
> Nikhil and list:
> 
> 	I disagree on the sentence below.  There is huge policy relevance toGBD.
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
>> On Jul 26, 2017, at 9:17 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com <mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> The GBD cult must declare that GBD has zero predictive value. Which means zero policy relevance. 
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170726/774e4419/attachment.html>


More information about the Stoves mailing list